Ill bash the pgc all day long they do nothing for the pa hunters.Let out of state pochers get a licence in pa. Hand out more doe permits than there is deer lol.They need your money to keep the sport alive it must be nice to collect all the money for the licences and tags and do nothing to help the deer out. They wont be happy until all the deer are gone and it costs you an arm and a leg to put meat on the table.Dont you see whats going on kill them does off and what do you have left ???? Heres one for the pgc start putting squirrel tags for 1.50 a tag lets see if we can kill all them off too.

If you have something good to say about the PGC, then please say it. Not to many people that I hunt with here in PA are happy with what they are doing.

Sites like these are designed so hunters can not only complain but praise good hunting regulations. It is called freedom of speech. If you don't agree with someone then voice your opinion and start a discussion. Maybe you will change someone's mind or bring information to the table that they didn't know about or hadn't been thinking of. That why this is a forum.

PA has actually done well with the regulations. Now I will say, they may have take the doe herd pretty low in some places, but for the most part, we needed it. Studies done on our forests have shown that there has been no new growth over the past couple years. With the reduced deer herd, our forests can now start to regenerate. Jeff Krause from the Army Corp of Engineers at Raystown Lake explains this well. It would be good for PA hunters to check this out. You can type his name or anything to that extent into a search engine and find some good info on it. Until hearing him speak at a QDMA meeting, I felt the same way as many PA hunters. The fact is, with healthier forests, we will have a healthier deer herd. We may never see the groups of 20 doe running through the woods again, but had the PGC not made any changes, the deer population could have done this to itself through malnourishment or anything to that extent. Plus, we the hunters bought the licenses and shot the deer. So who really are we to blame, sure the PGC extended the doe season and allocated more tags, but we are the ones who bought those tags and shot those deer.

Location Location Location... everyone will have a different view on this subject depending on where you hunt. plan and simple..
i hunt north central pa.. tioga potter area.. there has been an extreme shortage of deer in the mountains i hunt there... not seeing deer will make you fight to save a few doe, in return equal future buck...
second area i hunt is a rolling hills farm land in pa.. motto we have for here is its brown its down. seeing 15 - 20 deer a day is normal.. third area i hunt is northampton county.. there will always be deer here considering there just about all in your backyard.. manage how you want!.. again it all comes down to location.

[size="2"][font="arial"]ya know the deer population problem isn't any ones fault but the hunters, yea the game commission and dcnr sell tags but whos the ones shooting them, hunters gripe and bitch about deer population but ive seen them shoot as many as possible. so it boils down to self control. no ones fault but our own. i buy a license every year but haven't gone hunting in 3 years. just something to think about when you don't see anything. [/font][/size]

MD Lease wrote:This Pensylvania forum sucks!! All anybody does on here is either bash the Game Commission or talk about doe licenses. It's embarassing to be from Pennsylvania on here.

this is an older thread but worth revisiting due to recent trends....

there's nothing wrong with the forum, but Pa. deer hunting has some serious issues at the present time. I live and hunt in WMU 3D and the hunting has become progressively worse each passing year- and I'm not the only one who sees, we are paying the PGC money for licenses, to hunt deer that don't exist. 1 out of 100 hunters get deer in the gamelands, they are EMPTY of game. All the good hunting land is tied up as private land. The local banks, builders, realtors RUINED this WMU, by jumping on the housing bubble bandwagon, that burst terribly in 2008. Now all those homes sit with no buyers, and the habitat is gone. How would you like to sit in your stand for 4 hours, see nothing, then go home and see a 6 pointer and 8 pointer in your back yard, eating your table scraps- year after year- in a housing development that grew from 435 homes in 1994, to 1,000 homes in 2012, many of which are now up for sale and in foreclosure, or abandoned.

The PGC has mismanaged the deer herd terribly, per below:

1. Pa now. has a 6 week bow and inline muzzleloader season, just before the rifle season. Many of the bowhunters are not using SCOPED CROSSBOWS, just as deadly in brush as a Winchester 94 30-30, and maybe even more accurate. Most of the big bucks get knocked off before the rifle season even opens, when their stupid chasing doe in the rut.

2. PGC is issuing doe tags like candy. I know quite a few hunters that get 3 tags without hardly trying. In the old days pre-1980, it was hard to get ONE doe tag. Every doe shot, kills 3 deer, the doe and the 2 fawns it would have next year. Wake up hunters, at this rate, there will be no deer herd left.

3. PGC is in bed with the Pa. insurance companies, to wipe out the deer herd, and cut down on deer hits- so the insurance co.'s have to fix less cars, and save millions $$$. Just follow the money.

4. I remember seeing lines of 12-14 deer running through the woods in the late-1970's. Now a "large" herd is 4-5 deer.

5. Traveling to distant WMU's just to shoot a whitetail, is NOT WORTH IT. The cost of fuel, food, boarding, plus licenses, etc. then cost to process the meat, makes a deer hunt in some far off WMU, cost nearly $600-$1,000. If I'm going to spend that much, may as well charter an elk hunt to Colorado and have some real hunting, camp kitchen, guide, horse, etc.

PGC needs to wake up and stop taking our money to hunt deer that don't even exist. I know many more hunters QUITTING than I do new hunters trying it for the first time. Does the PGC even care ?

They need to give the private landowners some incentive to open their land again, to hunting. The only way one can have a high degree of success in WMU 3D is:

1. Buy/own your own parcel of land, 30+ acres, preferably 100+ acres, and when the property tax bill comes due every year, to support the local counties and school districts, you'll realize it's not worth owning the land just to hunt deer on.

2. Know someone else who owns 30+ acres and gives you permission to hunt on it- and preferably 100 acres, because the remaining deer are so heavily pressured, they are quite smart and are now looking up into trees, and avoid ladder tree stands with platforms, that are 25 feet high.

3. Be one of the lucky ones that gets a deer on gamelands, if you can dodge all the bullets that fly by, when a deer may happen to run through there. On first day I counted 45 cars parked at the local gamelands. Some cars had 4 people per car. Imagine hunting with 200 guys on property. It's like a war if a deer does show up. I also know a few people that quit hunting because bullets whizzed past their heads, while sitting in tree stands. I can go on, but will stop there. Well one more- 2 days ago hunters shot and wounded a doe near my home in the safety zone, and when local residents emerged from their homes to take a look, the hunters ran and abandoned the deer. These same hunters left a dead doe elsewhere in the area.

that's because there's no deer in the woods, and the deer hang out in the housing projects, and hunters are coming closer and closer, trying to get one.